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Mismatch Between Obama’s Rhetoric and Record

Posted by GayPatriotWest at 9:00 am - March 2, 2009.
Filed under: Big Government Follies,Liberal Hypocrisy,Obama Watch

One day, President Obama hosts a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit.”  Three days later, he releases a budget forecasting near trillion dollar annual federal deficits for the next decade.  There’s quite a mismatch between his rhetoric and his record.

And he has the gall to title his Budget, “A New Era of Responsibility,” causing economist Irwin Steltzer to wonder:

What is responsible about a budget that projects deficits rising from $459 billion to $1,752 billion in the first year of Obama’s budget, and remaining at $712 billion as far ahead as 2019, when the economy will be growing, is not clear.

Once the glow of his honeymoon starts to fade and the people start catching on, his credibility could sink to Clintonian levels.  Maybe some people, so enamored with the charismatic chief executive may never catch on.  Even he seems to believe his own rhetoric.  In his radio address on Saturday, he said:

I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak.  My message to them is this:

“So am I.”

Conservative bloggers have been having a field day with that one. John Hinderaker, who alerted me to the howler, offered, “lobbyists all over Washington are lighting cigars with $50 bills at the prospect of having $3.7 trillion worth of spoils to divvy up.” Law professor William A. Jacobson calls “Obama’s multi-trillion dollar spending spree . . . a lobbyist’s wet dream. More money will be made by more lobbyists divvying up this pork than in the collective history of the United States.”

(H/t to Glenn for the Steltzer and Jacobson links.)

Obama still talks like a candidate running against big spending Republicans and Washington’s “culture of corruption.”  But, he’s president now and is offering us George W. Bush’s domestic policy on steroids, with ever higher levels of federal spending.

The only thing Obama has changed from the “old way of doing business” is the speed.  I doubt any of his predecessors have ever proposed increasing spending by this amount in such a short time.  He sure didn’t campaign on spending increases of this magnitude.

He’s spending money our grandchildren haven’t earned yet.

UDPATE:  At Powerline, John notes we are already seeing a decline in the president’s polls:

What’s happening here is that, while media types swoon over Obama’s way with a teleprompter, voters are focusing on something else–the consequences of higher taxes, unprecedented federal spending and control over the economy, and crushing levels of debt. The more they focus on those things, the less they like them.

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15 Comments

  1. I’m gonna move over comments of mine from the Steele thread – they’re more appropriate here.

    ———————————-

    Speaking of Obama’s long-term blueprint, Senator Jon Kyl is reported to have said: “This budget adds more debt to our country’s future than all of the debt from 1789, when George Washington was president, through Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush.” I don’t know for sure that Kyl is right, but he’s been right before.

    So a doubling (or near-doubling) of the U.S. national debt over the next several years is now being sold by the Obamoonies as “deficit reduction”. It’s a scene from George Orwell’s _1984_. Specifically, page 51 of the Signet Classic paperback edition:

    “It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for rasing the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, [Winston] reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be *reduced* to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams. Syme, too – in some more complex way, involving doublethink – Syme swallowed it. Was [Winston], then, *alone* in the possession of a memory?”

    Comment by ILoveCapitalism — March 2, 2009 @ 9:37 am - March 2, 2009

  2. He’s spending money our grandchildren haven’t earned yet.

    We’ve been doing this for years. We’re up to great-grandchildren now. :-)

    Comment by Pat — March 2, 2009 @ 9:39 am - March 2, 2009

  3. Dan, you’re absolutely right here, and the parade of corruption through the Obama administration seems to know no end. Here’s the latest:

    Buildings sprang up as donations rained down on Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion

    I’m sure this is not the Adolfo Carrion BHO knew…

    -Nick (from HQ)

    Comment by ColoradoPatriot — March 2, 2009 @ 10:12 am - March 2, 2009

  4. And 300 bil more for AIG. Yay!

    Comment by Sonicfrog — March 2, 2009 @ 10:23 am - March 2, 2009

  5. Ooops, that should be 30 bil. I was yawning when I typed that.

    Comment by Sonicfrog — March 2, 2009 @ 10:23 am - March 2, 2009

  6. 30, 300? Who cares? It’s all for our own good, right?

    Comment by The Livewire — March 2, 2009 @ 11:00 am - March 2, 2009

  7. Dan, when I was growing up I was taught that the word was “lie”… not “mismatch” :)

    Comment by Bruce (GayPatriot) — March 2, 2009 @ 11:18 am - March 2, 2009

  8. Dan

    You are probably right that Obama´s credibility could sink to Clintonian levels. But I would venture to say that his approval ratings will equal Bush´s final within three years.

    Comment by Roberto — March 2, 2009 @ 11:29 am - March 2, 2009

  9. Dan, you are probably right in saying that Obama´s credibility could sink to Clintonian levels. But I would venture to say that his approval rating will equal Bush´s final rating within three years. The way so many flocked to him from the primaries through election day is the way many of them will abandon him when they feel the effects of his policies.

    Comment by Roberto — March 2, 2009 @ 11:56 am - March 2, 2009

  10. I understand why you fellas are upset. You are used to being coddled and told everything is free!

    From Newsday:

    http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-vpbud016053537mar01,0,6930525.story

    “…It has been common for presidents from both parties to employ gimmicks to make their choices appear more palatable.

    Obama explicitly rejected some of the more egregious budgeting practices of his immediate predecessor. President George W. Bush never included the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his budgets, for instance, opting instead to treat those military campaigns as emergencies and fund them off the books. He took a similar approach with the entirely predictable $60 billion it cost the Treasury for each year that Congress spared 20 million taxpayers the expensive bite of the alternative minimum tax. Bush also budgeted nothing for federal disaster response, though natural disasters invariably occur. Obama included all three things in his 10-year budget.”

    Comment by gillie — March 2, 2009 @ 12:05 pm - March 2, 2009

  11. “What is responsible about a budget that projects deficits rising from $459 billion to $1,752 billion in the first year of Obama’s budget, and remaining at $712 billion as far ahead as 2019 …”

    Hello? It’s “responsible” because he promised he’d cut the deficit in half and $712B looks like half or less of $1,752B to me. Promise kept!

    He just didn’t bother to say (a lie by omission) that he’d TRIPLE it first. Is that a problem?

    Comment by DoorHold — March 2, 2009 @ 12:18 pm - March 2, 2009

  12. So gillie, you’d have no problem if President Bush had put the budget for Iraq/Afganistan ‘on the books’ (ignoring that you can’t hide costs when the bills come due, and the spending measures passed with bipartisan support)?

    Comment by The Livewire — March 2, 2009 @ 1:14 pm - March 2, 2009

  13. So after 30 years of “deficits don’t matter” am I to believe Republicans now believe that deficit spending is bad? Where was this thinking for the last eight years???

    Comment by Houndentenor — March 2, 2009 @ 3:12 pm - March 2, 2009

  14. Welcome to the blog Hountennor!

    since you’ve apparently just started reading as of 1/20/09 I suggest you take the time to read through the archives, as well as some of the links. You’ll be able to bring yourself up to speed on financial conservatism fairly quickly.

    Comment by The_Livewire — March 2, 2009 @ 3:50 pm - March 2, 2009

  15. Keep polishing the shit, gillie. Whatever makes you happy.

    Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 2, 2009 @ 5:16 pm - March 2, 2009

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